Scientists at the La Jolla laboratories of Novartis are taking part in an unusual assignment for the pharmaceutical industry — finding drugs for some diseases with little or no moneymaking potential.

Using powerful genetic-analysis tools more commonly targeted to cancer and other diseases prevalent in industrialized nations, researchers are studying patterns that underlie malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries and more obscure conditions such as leishmaniasis and Chagas’ disease.

It’s part of an increased effort by the pharmaceutical industry to pursue treatments for “neglected” diseases for which drugs either don’t exist or don’t work well. It also includes diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, for which large numbers of people in developing countries are not being treated.

Fueled by new funding sources, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, companies have pushed almost two dozen drugs into clinical trials.

“It is extremely important for the pharma companies to show that they are good citizens,” said Paul Herrling, the Novartis executive who oversees the neglected-disease effort. “Of course we want profit, but we are also contributing to society.”

Although there is more research on neglected diseases than in the past, experts say it is far from enough.

For one thing, Herrling said there is not enough money available to fund the large clinical trials necessary as drugs progress in development. He estimated that work could cost an extra $1 billion a year.

For another, some experts say the drug industry needs to pursue a wider range of drugs for a broader spectrum of diseases.

“What matters here is answering the question of whether the money available now is enough to develop new drugs,” said Piero Olliaro, a World Health Organization official who works on neglected tropical diseases. “The answer is no. We need much more money in the upstream phases, discovering new drugs with new mechanisms of action.”

At Novartis, which employs 550 people at its Genomics Institute off Torrey Pines Road, scientists collaborate with colleagues around the world.

The institute’s major role within Novartis is the rapid study of the function of various genes, especially those that may be linked to disease. It’s work that often requires specialized equipment that Novartis hired 15 engineers from General Motors to help develop.

It enables scientists at Novartis labs to generate genetic data on areas of interest to them. Then scientists at the other labs put the information to use in coming up with compounds likely to have an effect.

With neglected diseases, much of the work takes place at a lab in Singapore set up for that purpose. Herrling said that Novartis put $200 million in initial funding into the lab but that it is largely funded with money from foundations and other outside sources.

Scientists there often seek help from La Jolla on projects that involve malaria, tuberculosis or dengue fever.

“One thing we found when we created the Singapore institute with its not-for-profit mission was that many of the scientists on the commercial side are really eager to contribute,” Herrling said.

Swiss-based Novartis is far from alone in its neglected-disease effort. A 2008 study by the Access to Medicine Foundation in the Netherlands ranked GlaxoSmithKline first in its efforts to improve health care in developing countries, with Novo Nordisk, Merck and Novartis near the top of the list.

Another report, from the George Institute for International Health in Australia, found that $2.6 billion went into research and development on neglected diseases in 2007. The U.S. government funded about half of that, with the Gates Foundation putting in $452 million.

“The participation of many new organizations and countries in the development of new neglected disease products is a remarkable and welcome change from past decades of inertia and neglect,” the report said.

Olliaro said there was little work done in neglected-disease research through the 1990s. Then came a number of public-private partnerships between drug companies and governments to try to drive the work.

For example, Novartis’ Singapore institute is partly government-backed and is in a science park called “Biopolis” also supported by the government there.

At Novartis, Herrling is proposing a global fund to meet the $1 billion annual cost he said is necessary to get drugs through development and to patients. Money would come from governments and foundations, with a governing board to manage projects in much the way pharmaceutical companies do.

“You just use exactly what we do, minus the profit,” Herrling said.

Herrling described one success Novartis has had in the neglected-disease area. During the Vietnam War, he said, the Viet Cong turned to the Chinese for help in finding a treatment for malaria, which was killing many soldiers.

The Chinese suggested an herb in use for more than 2,000 years and started some lab work to figure out what was killing the parasite. But the war ended, and the Chinese eventually contacted Novartis to continue the development and bring the drug to market.

The resulting drug, which added a compound to the Chinese one, achieved cure rates up to 95 percent in clinical trials. While Novartis makes little money on it, more patients get it than any other drug the company markets.